Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T07:24:08.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building bridges across political divides: experiments on deliberative democracy in deeply divided Belgium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2013

Didier Caluwaerts  and
Kris Deschouwer
Didier Caluwaerts*
Affiliation:
Post-doctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department of Political Science, Brussels, Belgium and Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School, Belgium
Kris Deschouwer
Affiliation:
Research Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department of Political Science, Brussels, Belgium
*
*E-mail: dcaluwae@vub.ac.be
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In recent years, deliberative democracy has moved from a philosophical ideal into an empirical theory with numerous experiments testing the theoretical assumptions. Despite the wealth of evidence on the potential for deliberation, scholars have remained hesitant to test the theoretical premises under rather more adverse circumstances. This article, in contrast, tries to push deliberative scholarship to its edge by focusing on the viability of citizen deliberation in deeply divided societies. Our research questions are whether contact between citizens of competing segments undermines the potential for deliberation, and under which institutional conditions this is so. Based on a deliberative experiment in Belgium, in which we varied the group composition and the decision-making rule, we argue that decision rules are strong predictors of deliberative quality, but more importantly that the confrontation between citizens from both sides of the divide does not undermine the quality of deliberation. On the contrary even, our results indicate that the quality of intergroup deliberation is higher than that of intragroup deliberation, no matter what the rule.

Keywords

deliberative democracyBelgiumdivided societies
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 427 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, P.D. (1999), Multiple Regression: A Primer , Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.Google Scholar
Allport, G. (1954), The Nature of Prejudice, Reading: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Bächtiger, A. (2005), The Real World of Deliberation. A Comparative Study of Its Favorable Conditions in Legislatures, Bern: Berner Studien zur Politikwissenschaft.Google Scholar
Caluwaerts, D. (2012), ‘Waar en wanneer spreken mannen en vrouwen over politiek? De sekseverschillen in politieke discussie in hun sociale en politieke context’, Res Publica 53: 5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conover, P.J., Searing, D.D. and Crewe, I.M. (2002), ‘The deliberative potential of political discussion’, British Journal of Political Science 32: 21–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, J.H., Kerr, N.L., Atkin, R.S., Holt, R. and Meek, D. (1975), ‘The decision processes of 6- and 12-Person Mock Juries assigned unanimous and two-thirds majority rules’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32: 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delli Carpini, M.X., Cook, F.L. and Jacobs, L.R. (2004), ‘Public deliberation, discursive participation, and citizen engagement: a review of the empirical literature’, Annual Review of Political Science 7: 315–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deschouwer, K. (2012), The Politics of Belgium. Governing a Divided Society, London: Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar
Diamond, S.S., Rose, M.R. and Murphy, B. (2005), ‘Revisiting the unanimity requirement: the behavior of the non-unanimous civil jury’, Northwestern Law Review 100: 1–30.Google Scholar
Doerr, N. (2012), ‘Translating democracy: how activists in the European Social Forum practice multilingual deliberation’, European Political Science Review 4: 361–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L. and Kawakami, K. (2003), ‘Intergroup contact: the past, present, and the future’, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 6: 5–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryzek, J.S. (2000), Deliberative Democracy and Beyond. Liberals, Critics, Contestations, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dryzek, J.S. (2005), ‘Deliberative democracy in divided societies: alternatives to agonism and analgesia’, Political Theory 33: 218–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eliasoph, N. (1998), Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, J. (1998), ‘Deliberation and constitution making’, in J. Elster (ed.), Deliberative Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 97–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiket, I., Olsen, E.D.H. and Trenz, H.-J. (2011), Deliberation under conditions of language pluralism. Insight from the Europolis Deliberative Polling Experiment, Oslo: Arena.Google Scholar
Foss, R.D. (1981), ‘Structural effects in simulated jury decision making’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40: 1055–1062.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fung, A. (2003), ‘Recipes for public spheres: eight institutional design choices and their consequences’, Journal of Political Philosophy 11(3): 338–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gastil, J. (1993), Democracy in Small Groups, Philadelphia: New Society.Google Scholar
Gerardi, D. and Yariv, L. (2007), ‘Deliberative voting’, Journal of Economic Theory 134: 317–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guarnaschelli, S., McKelvey, R.D. and Palfrey, T.R. (2000), ‘An experimental study of jury decision rules’, American Political Science Review 94: 407–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1996), Democracy and Disagreement, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (2005), ‘Concluding comments on empirical approaches to deliberative politics’, Acta Politica 40: 384–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hastie, R., Penrod, S.D. and Pennington, N. (1983), Inside the Jury, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hindess, B. (2000), ‘Representation ingrafted upon democracy?’, Democratization 7: 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooghe, M. (1999), ‘The Rebuke of Thersites. Deliberative democracy under conditions of inequality’, Acta Politica 34: 287–301.Google Scholar
Karpowitz, C., Mendelberg, T. and Shaker, L. (2012), ‘Gender inequality in deliberative participation’, American Political Science Review 106(3): 533–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keysar, B., Hayakawa, S.L. and An, S.G. (2012), ‘The foreign-language effect: thinking in a foreign tongue reduces decision biases’, Psychological Science 23: 661–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklinski, J.H., Riggle, E., Ottati, V., Schwarz, N. and Wyer, R.S. (1991), ‘The cognitive and affective bases of political tolerance judgments’, American Journal of Political Science 35: 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landwehr, C. (2009), Political Conflict and Political Preferences. Communicative Interaction Between Facts, Norms and Interests, Colchester: ECPR Press.Google Scholar
Lijphart, A. (1975), The Politics of Accommodation. Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lijphart, A. (1981), ‘Introduction: the Belgian example of cultural coexistence in comparative perspective’, in A. Lijphart (ed.), Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium. The Dynamics of a Culturally Divided Society, Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California.Google Scholar
Longman, C. (2007), ‘The European convention as communicative environment: the challenge of multilingual deliberation’, in J.E. Fossum, P. Schlesinger and G.O. Kvaerk (eds), Public Sphere and Civil Society? Transformations in the European Union, Oslo: Arena, pp. 89–112.Google Scholar
Lopes, D., Vala, J. and Garcia-Marques, L. (2007), ‘Social validation of everyday knowledge: heterogeneity and consensus functionality’, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 11: 223–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luskin, R., O'Flynn, I., Fishkin, J. and Russell, D. (2012), ‘Deliberating across deep divides’, Political Studies, published online.Google Scholar
Mackuen, M.B., Marcus, G.E., Neuman, W.R. and Keele, L. (2007), ‘The third way: affective intelligence and the depiction of American democracy’, in A. Crigler, G.E. Marcus, M. MacKuen and W.R. Neuman (eds), The Affect Effect Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 124–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGarry, J. and O’Leary, B. (2009), ‘Power shared after the deaths of thousands’, in R. Taylor (ed.), Consociational Theory: McGarry & O'Leary and the Northern Ireland conflict, New York: Routledge, pp. 15–84.Google Scholar
McGraw, B.T. (2010), Faith in Politics. Religion and Liberal Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meirowitz, A. (2007), ‘In defense of exclusionary deliberation: communication and voting with private beliefs and value’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 19: 301–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendelberg, T. (2002), ‘The deliberative citizen: theory and evidence’, Political Decision Making, Deliberation and Participation 6: 151–193.Google Scholar
Mendelberg, T. and Karpowitz, C. (2006), ‘How people deliberate about justice: groups, gender, and decision rules’, in S.W. Rosenberg (ed.), Deliberation, Participation and Democracy. Can the People Govern?, New York: Palgrave, pp. 101–129.Google Scholar
Mill, J.S. (1865/1991), ‘Considerations on representative government’, in J. Gray (ed.), John Stuart Mill. On Liberty and Other Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 175–447.Google Scholar
Morrell, M. (2010), Empathy and Democracy. Feeling, Thinking and Deliberation, University Park: Penn State University Press.Google Scholar
Morton, R.B. and Williams, K.C. (2010), Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality: From Nature to the Lab, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutz, D. (2006), Hearing the Other Side. Deliberative vs. Participatory Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, G. (2007), ‘Enabling talk: how the facilitator shapes a focus group’, Text & Talk – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language Discourse & Communication Studies 27(1): 79–105.Google Scholar
Nemeth, C. (1977), ‘Interactions between jurors as a function of majority vs. unanimity decision rules’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 7: 38–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Flynn, I. (2006), Deliberative Democracy and Divided Societies, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O‘Leary, B. (2005), ‘Debating consociational politics: Normative and explanatory arguments’, in S. Noel (ed.), From Power Sharing to Democracy: Post-conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen‘s University Press, pp. 3–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettigrew, T. (1998), ‘Intergroup contact theory’, Annual Review of Psychology 49: 65–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenberg, S. (2005), ‘The empirical study of deliberative democracy: setting a research agenda’, Acta Politica 40: 212–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryfe, D.M. (2005), ‘Does deliberative democracy work?’, Annual Review of Political Science 8: 49–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanders, L. (1997), ‘Against deliberation’, Political Theory 25: 347–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinardet, D. (2008), ‘Belgian federalism put to the test? The 2007 Belgian federal elections and their aftermath’, West European Politics 31: 1016–1032.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steenbergen, M.R., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M. and Steiner, J. (2003), ‘Measuring political deliberation: a discourse quality index’, Comparative European Politics 1: 21–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steiner, J., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M. and Steenbergen, M.R. (2004), Deliberative Politics in Action. Analysing Parliamentary Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Steiner, J. (2012), The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy. Empirical Research and Normative Implications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, C.R. (2007), ‘Ideological amplification’, Constellations 14: 273–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, D.F. (2008), ‘Deliberative democratic theory and empirical political science’, Annual Review of Political Science 11: 497–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, I.M. (2000), Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ulbig, S.G. and Funk, C.L. (1999), ‘Conflict avoidance and political participation’, Political Behavior 21: 265–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar